Yank fliers accept death for sake of helpless mate
North Side gunner one of 5 ordered to bail out when Liberator is disabled in Anzio mission
By Clinton B. Conger, United Press staff writer
…
In Washington –
Training cost for WASPS is under fire
Blocking of probe charged to Army
Washington (UP) –
Rep. Robert Ramspeck (D-GA) declared today that “official silence” is blocking inquiries into charges that the Army is training women pilots for the WASPS at a cost of up to $20,000 each, while services of thousands of available male pilots are being ignored.
He said his House Civil Service Investigating Committee had received numerous such complaints.
He said:
If the reports are true, it is certainly a waste of the taxpayers’ money to train the girls and leave the large numbers of trained pilots unused.
May hold hearings
Unless the information is forthcoming from the Army, Mr. Ramspeck said, his committee may hold hearings to get it. He said the charges may be presented when a pending bill to take the WASPS into the Army comes up in the House. The Military Affairs Committee approved the measure after Gen. H. H. Arnold, commander of the Army Air Forces, testified in support of it.
Most of the complaints, Mr. Ramspeck said, come from male pilots who say that the Army is training “green and inexperienced” girls, leaving untouched the services of thousands of skilled male pilots left idle with curtailment of Army and Navy flight training programs. In addition, increasing numbers of pilots returning from combat duty add to the pilot pool.
Started as small group
The women fliers started as a small expert group – the WAFS under Nancy Love – composed of a few women pilots, all of whom already had good flying records.
The WASPS later started under Jacqueline Cochran, and now include 534 women pilots with others in training.
The WASPS, if taken into the Army as provided in the Costello bill, would be headed by one officer of colonel rank – a post which would presumably go to Miss Cochran.
Stokes: Former Senator Norris alarmed by partisan actions of Congress
Grand old man of Progressivism favors soldier vote, higher taxes, fourth term
By Thomas L. Stokes, Scripps-Howard staff writer
McCook, Nebraska –
Former Senator George W. Norris, the grand old man of American Progressivism, looks out from the sun-porch windows of his home here upon the country and the world and finds some things that disturb him.
For the better part of an early spring afternoon, the venerable political warrior and philosopher talked about the course of events, speaking his fears of some trends he observes in Washington, where he served so long, and voicing also certain hopes and ideals for the future.
He is alarmed about what he regards as narrow partisanship in Congress. With much misgiving, he watched the fight in Congress over the soldier vote bill. He thought President Roosevelt was plainly right about this and the tax bill.
Just now he is deeply concerned over the fight that Senator McKellar (D-TN) is making against TVA, still closest to the aged statesman’s heart among the achievements of his career in Congress.
In the field of foreign policy, Mr. Norris is critical of our support of the Badoglio regime in Italy, of our recognition of Vichy, and what all this may mean, and, like so many others, he wonders what went on behind the closed doors at Cairo and Tehran. He concedes that he doesn’t have enough information to make sure and exact judgments, but he is beset with doubts about the indicated drift.
Favors fourth term
Despite this, however, and despite differences on some domestic policies, he is for a fourth term for President Roosevelt. He believes defeat of the President would hurt the morale of our armies, encourage our enemies, and prolong the war. He regards Mr. Roosevelt’s continuance in office as necessary to secure the right kind of peace.
Although he opposed the League of Nations after the last war, he is strong for an international organization to insure the peace after this war. He advocated the disarmament of Germany, Japan and Italy, perhaps also of Romania, Hungary and Bulgaria, and demolition of their armament and munitions factories; but he warns that the peace settlement this time must not be one of vengeance carried on to innocent generations, else there will be another holocaust.
It is inspiring and warming to talk to the ex-Senator, and particularly so here against his background, for it gives you a better understanding of the man and the people among whom he lives in mid-America – drab, yes; living in towns so much alike, yes; but still groping for a star.
Streamliner’s wall
There is the brick railroad station, where the streamliners whir by going East and West, and the plain people mill about – and now so many soldiers. Always associated with this country is the whistle of the streamliner which wails through the night, crying across the plains, lonely as the voice of a pioneer.
Away from the station, up the hill, leads Main Street, just as in all of these towns here, past the stores, predominantly chain names now, past the once-nice restaurant which is so crowded and so short of help that you have to stand in line to eat.
You pass the hotel where the manager, himself, is down every morning soon after daybreak, sweeping the lobby and tidying up.
Home for 60 years
Seven block from the station sits the two-story stucco house where the Senator lives with his wife who, at 70, has to do the cooking and most of the housework because of the lack of domestic help. The Senator has lived for 60 years in this house.
He meets you at the door and welcomes you, glad to have a visitor. He leads you to the sun porch off the first door, where he spends most of his time. Here he works on his autobiography which is now nearly completed and will be published in the fall. Newspapers are about, and books.
He talks about Washington and Congress and the world and the plain people, relighting from time to time the stub of a cigar.
Editorial: Are they interested?
Some of the opponents of a federal ballot for soldier voting contended, among other arguments, that the men in the Armed Forces overseas are not interested in voting.
They have been predicting that most of them wouldn’t vote if given a fair chance.
We think this is beside the point. This is a constitutional democracy and under that form of government every citizen is entitled to a reasonable opportunity to vote. We should think that right would apply especially to those who are fighting the nation’s battles.
But here is a sign that they are interested and that they will vote, given a decent chance.
The Stars and Stripes is a daily newspaper published by and for the members of the Armed Forces stationed in the European and Mediterranean war theaters. There are good reasons to believe that this newspaper not only is the overseas fighter’s principal source of information, but that it fairly well reflects the opinions and interests of its readers.
In a February issue of Stars and Stripes, only recently received in this office, a complete roll call of the House on the soldier vote issue was published. Stars and Stripes obtained this roll call by special cable, not having received it from its regular news sources in the United States.
It is reasonable to assume that Stars and Stripes wouldn’t have gone to this trouble and expense had not its editors believed it was justified by the interest of its readers.
Background of news –
Wisconsin politics
By Bertram Benedict
Although Wendell Willkie has repeatedly stated in his primary campaign in Wisconsin that the result will be “crucial” to his chances for the nomination, the result in actuality may be less significant than that. For one thing, any voter may vote in either party primary in Wisconsin. The state does not even require, as do some other states with “wide-open” primaries, that the voter in a party primary pledge himself to support that party in the election.
Tomorrow’s statewide vote in Wisconsin for delegates-at-large to the national conventions may mean more than the vote for the district delegates. Mr. Willkie is supposed to be at a disadvantage in the districts bordering on Illinois, where the influence of The Chicago Tribune is strongest. Ex-Governor Stassen of Minnesota may do best in the districts bordering on Minnesota. Delegates for Gen. MacArthur may be aided by the fact that the general comes of a Wisconsin family, and spent most of his boyhood in Milwaukee.
Wisconsin long had a reputation as “leftish,” and for many years did lead the states in much social-welfare and political-reform legislation. The La Follettes controlled the state, which was the only one to vote for La Follette for President on a third-party ticket in 1924.
Former socialist stronghold
For 24 years, the mayor of Milwaukee was Daniel W. Hoan, a Socialist (much of his support came from non-socialists), and the second (and last) Socialist to sit in the House of Representatives was Victor Berger of Wisconsin (the first was Meyer London of New York).
But in recent years, Wisconsin may have swung well away from the left. Mr. Hoan was defeated for Mayor of Milwaukee in 1940. Two years before, Progressive Governor Philip La Follette had been defeated for reelection by a conservative Republican, Julius P. Heil.
Wisconsin gave Socialist Eugene Debs 85,000 votes for President in 1920; Socialist Norman Thomas, only 15,000 votes in 1940.
The state gave an overwhelming majority to Harding in 1920 and, although wet sentiment was strong, voted for Hoover over Smith in 1928. Wisconsin gave Roosevelt 67% of its major party vote in 1932 and 68% in 1936, but only 51% in 1940.
That it is dangerous to prophesy from primary results in Wisconsin was shown in 1940. Thomas E. Dewey, who stumped the state, contested the Republican primary with Senator Vandenberg, who remained in Washington but had Senator Nye of North Dakota to speak for him. Mr. Taft did not enter the primary, but the Taft men were believed to have supported Vandenberg, in a Stop-Dewey move. Mr. Dewey carried the primaries by about two-to-one over Mr. Vandenberg, and won all 24 delegates.
Prophecies recalled
Several days before, James A. Farley had predicted that if Mr. Dewey won in Wisconsin, he would be the Republican nominee. Mr. Vandenberg had been quoted to the same effect. Senator Nye said it was “very, very significant” that the total Republican primary vote was larger than the Democratic; he believed that Mr. Dewey had been helped by his “strong isolationist stand.”
E. F. Jaeckel, chairman of the executive committee of the New York State Republican Committee and now a Dewey sponsor; Charles P. Sisson, co-manager of Mr. Dewey’s campaign, and Kenneth Simpson, later a Willkie lieutenant, all said that the Wisconsin results augured well for a Republican victory in the nation.
In the Wisconsin Democratic primaries in 1940, President Roosevelt, not an avowed candidate, lost two delegates to John N. Garner. Mr. Garner got 25-30% of the Democratic vote, and Arthur Krock commented in his column in The New York Times of April 4, 1940:
If the vote for Garner delegates is viewed, as it must be, as a party protest against a third term for the President, then Mr. Roosevelt would face odds if he should seek reelection.
Independents await President’s action in WLB membership row
Confederated unions ready to strike if compromise proposal is rejected
By Fred W. Perkins, Pittsburgh Press staff writer
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Roving Reporter
By Ernie Pyle
With 5th Army beachhead forces, Italy – (by wireless)
This is a little series of vignettes about four frontline sergeants. They’re just little scenes that came along in conversation as we lay on an Italian hillside chatting one day. The four men are platoon sergeants of the 45th Division of the Allied 5th Army on the Anzio beachhead.
Sgt. Samuel Day of Covington, Kentucky, is a big guy. He weighed 257 pounds when he came into combat in January, and he still weighs 240 despite all the K-rations he’s eaten.
Sgt. Day would be hard on his feet in any circumstances. But when you get into a trench-foot world, 240 pounds is a lot of aggravation for sore dogs.
We get to discussing trench foot, and Sgt. Day told about an incident that happened to him. It seems his feet got in pretty bad shape during their last recent tour in the foxholes, so he went to the frontline medics for ointment or something.
The medics’ solution for his troubles was simple. With a straight face, they told him, “Keep your feet dry and stay off of them for two weeks!”
Sgt. Day went back to his watery foxhole, still sore-footed but unable to keep from chuckling over the irony of this advice. Their prescription for trench foot takes its place in history alongside W. C. Fields’ sure cure for insomnia – get lots of sleep!
Under weeds in ditch
Sgt. Eugene Bender of Stroudsburg, Pennsylvania, is the company first sergeant. He is short and curly-headed, and has a thin black mustache. When I saw him, he was sitting on a C-ration box, getting a between-battles haircut from a soldier barber.
The sergeant asked:
You don’t write news stories, do you?
I told him no, that I just sort of tried to write what it was like over here, and didn’t even especially look for hero stories, since there were so many guys who were heroes without there being any stories to it.
The sergeant said:
That’s good. Hero stories are all right, but they don’t give people at home the whole picture. You read a story in America of something terrific a guy does over here, and his folks think that happens to him every day.
Now take me. Once I was on patrol and was behind the German lines for 36 hours. We lay all day covered up with weeds in a ditch so close to Germans we could have reached out and touched them. When we finally got back, they had given us up for lost.
Now if you just wrote that story and nothing else, people would think that’s what I did all the time.
Riding waves in foxhole
Sgt. Vincent Mainente is from Astoria, Long Island, and of Italian extraction. He isn’t voluble like most Italian-Americans, but friendly in a quiet and reserved way.
Sgt. Mainente used to be a steam-heat inspector for the Pennsylvania Railroad, and he says:
I sure could use some of that steam heat in my foxhole these days.
We were just lying around on the ground talking, when one of the other boys said:
Vince, tell him about your raft.
“What do you mean, raft?” I asked. So Sgt. Mainente told me.
It seems the bottom of his foxhole was covered with water, like everybody else’s. So the sergeant saved up empty wooden C-ration boxes, and one night he nailed them together and made a raft to float on top of the water in his foxhole.
From all I could gather, it wasn’t 100% successful in keeping him dry, but at least there wasn’t any harm in trying.
Just can’t take it
Sgt. Michael Adams is from Akron, Ohio. He used to work for a truck company. He has been with the regiment ever since it came overseas last spring.
Sgt. Adams seems a little older than the others; his hair is beginning to slip back in front, and you can tell by his manner of speech that he thinks deeply about things.
We got to talking about soldiers who crack up in battle or before the ones who hang back or who think they’re sick and report in to the medics as exhaustion cases.
I personally have great sympathy for battle neurosis cases, but some of the soldiers themselves don’t have. For example, Sgt. Adams was telling how some of the replacements after only a few hours under fire, will go to the company commander and say:
Captain, I can’t take it. I just can’t take it.
That makes Sgt. Adams’ blood boil. He said to me:
They can’t take it? What, what the hell do they think the rest of us stay here for, because we like it?
And it’s that spirit, I guess, that wins wars.
Unfit for fighting –
4 of every 10 disabled soldiers are victims of emotional wounds
Toll of mental and nervous illnesses greater than battle injuries
By Marjorie Van de Water
Mental and nervous illnesses take a greater toll in the armed services than war wounds, Marjorie Van de Water points out in the first of five articles dealing with the return home of men discharged as “NPs” – neuropsychiatric cases. In this series, Miss Van de Water, author of Psychology for the Fighting Man, shows how the mentally wounded should be handled.
Four or five men in every 10 discharged from the Army for disability are mentally or emotionally unfit.
This means that mental and nervous illness is responsible for a far greater loss of manpower to the Armed Forces than are battle wounds, influenza, malaria or any other single illness.
It is a serious problem for the Army. And it is a serious problem for the home front, too. For the people at home are wondering just what it means when a man is charged for neuropsychiatric reasons. Are such men mentally ill, insane? Are they going to act “queer”? Can they make good on civilian jobs?
Each month approximately 25,000 of these men will be coming back to American homes and looking for civilian jobs if the present discharge rate continues.
Majority neurotic
Most of the worry of families, friends and employers is due to a lack of information about the sort of person the Army is sending home for this reason.
The great majority of the neuropsychiatric discharges are men who belong in the first, the “neuro,” part of the classification. They are neurotic. Few actually suffer from mental diseases. Few need hospitalization after discharge, although many might profit from good psychiatric advice.
Up to the present time, at least, the great majority are men who have not seen services overseas. They have had their crackup after a few months, perhaps only a few weeks, of training. They do not fit into military life and cannot successfully adjust to it.
It is debatable whether they can blame their troubles on their Army experience. Certainly, it is true these men might have adjusted perfectly well in civilian jobs if the war had not uprooted them. Most of them will go back to civilian jobs and fill them quite adequately. A few undoubtedly would never be very successful in either civilian or military occupations.
Many just don’t fit
But the Army has no corner on neurotics; there are plenty in civilian life. They just become more conspicuous in the Army. In the first place, men are so closely associated in the Army that they have no “private lives.” The oddities of any one individual become matters of public knowledge and public concern. Then, too, many individual oddities and quirks of behavior cannot be tolerated in a military situation – they just do not fit in.
Think how many persons in civilian life suffer from “nervous indigestion” – cannot eat this or that. They have their own private stock of favorite “tummy treats” or “banish burn” in the bathroom medicine closet. The Army cannot issue soda mint. Nor can time-out be taken in combat to stir up something for that after-meal discomfort.
Neither can the Army afford to have soldiers subject to headaches, stomach ulcers, high blood pressure, heart palpitation, dizziness, or faintness. These are ills to which the neurotic is liable. All are aggravated by emotion, by worry, by overconscientious “stewing” over present and future problems.
Few result from fear
Some men can’t stand the sight of blood. They pass out cold. But unless that person wants to be a dentist or a butcher or a surgeon, this is not likely to interfere much with his job in civilian life. It will in the Army.
Few of the nervous troubles of men discharged from the Army during military training are due to fear of combat. Many more can be traced to worries and troubles at home. Financial worries, homesickness, hunger for affection and companionship, concern over sickness at home – these are the things that make a soldier crack up in camp or “go over the hill.”
No one who leaves a comfortable happy home enjoys the tough grind of military life. Strict discipline, hard work, lack of sympathy and being plunged into a large group of strangers are hard to take for the individual who is naturally shy and unable to make new friends easily. Everything is new to him. The sergeant yells at him. Nothing he does seems right. He is bawled out right and left by the noncoms and he is teased by the other men.
They try their hardest
After a while, he may begin to feel completely discouraged and defeated. He is sure he can never make good in this strange new life. It is too hard. Most men get through this stage all right. Gradually they catch on to all the things expected of them and begin to feel at home. They make friends. But a few remain dispirited. It really is too hard for them. They are not fitted to be soldiers.
It is not their fault. Usually, this type of man tries his utmost. But his best is not quite good enough for the stern demands made on him. So, the Army decides he would be much more good to the war effort in a civilian job in a war plant where men are badly needed, too.
NEXT: The man who cracks up in combat.